DVD casing + Manual + Comic

[Shadowsun]

Simply put if your product is worth it and your support is good then people will buy your game.

to help matters its best to have a very good plan for multiplayer features, persistent customizations for ships based on rank etc maybe a learning system on your account like eve-online learning system were time spent training a skill.

for example researching capital ships beam lasers maybe take 6-8 hours after its done you can use beam lasers on your capital ships in multiplayer games helping you and your team win.

also rewarding a player something for winning like custom paint jobs etc.

anyway my two cents on the matter

i dont really see how training skills would positively impact the game... it'd be impossible to win against someone with everything unlocked (but then again.. i really hated eve for everything it did.. and does)

winning paint jobs would fun, but you'd run out of color schemes fast.... why not just release a manual painting system instead ( like Dawn of War 40k series)
but honestly.. coloring is not that important.. id rather they put time in making the game better then adding things like custom paintjobs.

overall, i think "prizes" gained when achieving something are for subscribtion-based games only... it's for giving people the incentive to keep playing 24-7, for if you stop others grow stronger then you...
its one of those things i cant stand.... its not fun beating people back with stuff they cannot yet use cuase of some rank, and its not fun getting beat back by it either (loss / loss situation)

surely good gameplay is incentive enough to get the game? it's the only thing that makes me buy games

-Shas

p.s.
oh yay, new intervieuw (opens in new tab)

[Vampyre]

Oh, bringing my two cents in this whole thread... I just need to react against the DRM... DRM are good if... they annoy more the pirate than the legit player.

The Ubisoft stuff is truly annoying to legit people... I can't play Settlers 7 if my mac is disconnected. And the pirates can still play it. So this is a bad system.

The Witcher 2 got no DRM. They were pirated 4 millions time (numbers just released last week). They sold 1 million copies, and this number is rising since they brightly brought a press text saying those facts. Since then, people DO buy this game legit since the company understand piracy. This is good, but not worth for the company... The good solution is somewhere there in between.

A very good protection I remember is Sins of a Solar Empire. They released a new patch each week. And by patch it was a balancing, a new unit, a new capability, nothing really big but an improvement brought by the player base on the forums. This weekly patch complicated the pirates life, because every week, he needed to crack it back. After two or three patchs, the pirates gave up and only waited for a good while before cracking a version. This, to me, is the best way. Legit players are not in trouble. They just need to update. For the pirates, it was more problematic. A crack each week, or wait until a few months later to crack when the releases get stabilized... In the end, the game is pirated, but it has annoyed more pirates than legit players.

Good support of the game is a key... The follow-up is key. If the dev say "ok, the game is out, finished, all-done, let's do something else", won't ever do anything good. Add-on value to legit player is key to me...

Well, only my two cents on the DRM :p

[antagonist]

Eh, the old discussion.

There is one giant flaw that all gaming companies make when they assume they lost out on 400% of their profit when 1m copies have been sold and another 4m pirated. There is a limited amount of money available to the average person and when they have to choose between such mundane things as food or heating oil and a new game, odds are they're not going to buy the game.

Overall, there will always be people who are going to buy the game because there's no cracked version available, but I'd be really surprised if the average increase in revenue for the publisher would be above 20%.

So yes, piracy is a problem. It's just not the bull in the china shop that the gaming industry likes to see it as.


And here's the kicker: Without DRM licensing fees, how much less would the average game cost? How many more people would possibly be interested in buying it?


Then there's also the problem of certain game designers selling the same thing over and over again - just with another name and a few new effects and updated graphics. And then they complain when people don't consider these games worth their money?


Right now, with the internet being what it is, copy protection is the wrong approach IMO. Those who buy the game run the risk of being unable to play it while the pirates wait for a bit, then play without DRM trouble. The game developer/publisher gets some potentially bad publicity and the only winner in the whole scheme are companies like Protection Technology and Tagès SA.

[etherealblade]

It's sort of a death spiral of doom. When companies start out their prices are reasonable, but then immediately shoot up when they gain a successful fan base for any succeeding game there after... Or so I thought. The amount of money it takes for companies to pump out bleeding edged visuals in their games causes them to spend more money in production. This races the price of games. People seem to be more comfortable in new games that range between $30-$50. However it just so happened that in the last 4 years or so, you see games that are $60 or more. While no excuse will ever justify pirating. Games are just expensive these days and I believe that's why piracy is an issue. Of course...it could be simply just because it is there.

Anyways we should be telling our friends and supporting Camal101. We are the only ones who can do something about developers moving away from PC after all...

[Jed]

Usually you're going to get pirated either way so you might as well chill out, have a drink, and make your paying customers feel extra special.

[Markuss]

you should do a retail release, lots of people will buy games just by looking at the box.

you should ptach the game up first tho.

[Boris28]

Game sells in Retail already

[Soban]

It's sort of a death spiral of doom. When companies start out their prices are reasonable, but then immediately shoot up when they gain a successful fan base for any succeeding game there after... Or so I thought. The amount of money it takes for companies to pump out bleeding edged visuals in their games causes them to spend more money in production. This races the price of games. People seem to be more comfortable in new games that range between $30-$50. However it just so happened that in the last 4 years or so, you see games that are $60 or more. While no excuse will ever justify pirating. Games are just expensive these days and I believe that's why piracy is an issue. Of course...it could be simply just because it is there.

Anyways we should be telling our friends and supporting Camal101. We are the only ones who can do something about developers moving away from PC after all...

Personally i see the $60 title deal happening on consoles more than pc ... and even then these days all you need to make your pc play like a console is an emulator + roms and a controller - my laptop can run ps2 + 1 games from the cd.
and bleeding edged visuals annoy me frankly, theyre used as an excuse to spend less time developing the game and adding depth;
look at Mass E-Fail 3's horrible ending, awesome graphics but also it was a dull and un-inventive solo campaign, meeting everyone you saved in the prior 2 versions to have them not participate in the final battle actively at your side, and go towards something that resembles a high-score counter from Tetris ... scuse my french but, FUCK looking nice - me3 was the first, and last collectors edition i will ever buy because i was so hideously disappointed with it.
imma give credit where its due ... for 3 people, Gemini wars looks good, and actually puts up a decent fight ... while its tactics are weird a times and exceedingly unpredictable, i havnt been beat down by an AI since Fever Pitch Studios: "Conquest: The Frontier Wars" and their "Impossible AI"
Edit: I also love the battle music ...